Random Stuff Post, Books, Cartoons, Meme
Sep. 7th, 2008 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Let's start with the Book Foo:
Finished: Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds
Started: Needle, by Hal Clement
Thoughts on Revelation Space behind the cut. General concept spoilers only. Short version: Left me a little cold, actually.
So, much of the novel takes place on a colony of a colony investigating a lost civiliation, and a slower than light spaceship in which the crew spends years between journeys (since FTL travel is believed impossible). The spaceship crew wants somebody from the colony, who wants to learn more about the extinct civilization, and somebody also wants to kill him. That's the thumbnail back of the book style.
The problem? Well, I never really got attached to any of the characters. Most of them are unpleasant for one reason or another, and while that's not enough to make me dislike a book, it usually doesn't help. The 'universe' the story takes place in is mildly interesting at times, and there's a lot going on in the story, but it doesn't gel together as a whole I could believe. Perhaps it suffers especially while reading it at the same time as AFutD, which also has a lot going on but pulls it off much more successfully.
Also, I was a little irritated at the number of times somebody told somebody else some aspect of "the big mystery" but we, the reader never learned about it until the end. And it wasn't really enough to satisfy.
It was the author's first novel, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt - I may read more from him if I find it used, but it's not such a great discovery that I'm going to be seeking him out.
Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Started: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Reread AFutD several times, so there's no need to talk about it again. Always makes me want to read the prequel immediately afterwards. Key phrases: hexapodia as the key insight, still enjoyable.
So, this weekend's been a bit strange. In addition to not having a normal TV (Which does weird and unexpected things to your sense of time), because of minor concerns with the computer of mine that wasn't specifically failing, I decided to run a ScanDisk on it, and see it through to the end. That Scandisk? Took more than 24 hours. So I was without my main talking computer (I segregate things somewhat - one computer is for mail, LJ, forums, and other such that I'm interacting with people, the other is for researching weird things and watching videos. I can do limited switchover, but not in all cases and not especially easily). It was almost a weekend without communicative net. If the progress bar didn't lie to me, it likely would have been. It was at a point where each 1% complete was taking 2-3 hours, except when it reached 95% complete it jumped right to 100%. I'm not complaining, mind you, it's just a little odd (and considering the first 80% was done in something like a half hour, well, progress bars are filthy, filthy liars). Combine that with another weekend without much TV, and it looks like a recipe for boredom.
This was alleviated somewhat with a chip orgy. I'm using the term orgy metaphorically, of course, I may have the odd fetish here or there, but I'm not a freak. Well, not in that way. Since Pringles were on sale for $1 at No Frills and so were Herrs Tortilla chips, I bought a bunch on Friday. Normally I limit my chip intake, but I figured, what the hell, I'm bored, depressed, and hungry.
The other thing I did was watch cartoons on my computer, specifically Avatar the Last Airbender, and surfthechannel.com. See, I only caught onto Avatar somewhere in the early 2nd season. I missed the 1st season almost completely, and never got around to catching the third (they changed the time on me and by the time I realized it, the 3rd season was half over). So I figured since nothing was going on, I'd go back and watch from the beginning. I'm about halfway through the first season now. It's interesting the misconceptions you can develop when you watch a show from the middle. (Cut for length, not really spoilery except for the status of characters in the first episodes)For example, I was always under the impression that Zuko's scarring and banishment was something that happened during the series itself, that he was on an ordinary mission to capture the Avatar, and when he failed he was banished and scarred as punishment, maybe late in the first season. Turns out, both were part of the character before he met the Avatar. I kinda preferred it my way (would have been more of an 'arc'), but it's not a drastic disappointment. I also grew to more of an appreciation for Sokka watching the first season. The 2nd season I knew him mostly as a goofy, useless, comic relief character with occasional moments of brilliance, and some of that's still true, but early on I could see more of him as being a hero on his own merits, and he's actually become one of my favorites now.
Overall I really enjoy the show and kind of regret not catching onto it sooner. This really is the kind of show US animation needs more of - appeals to kids but can be occasionally very dark, with death not being a dirty word as it seems to be in a lot of cartoons (where it seems that characters can be dead, but mostly only in the distant past and usually non-violently unless it's the motivation for the main character). Sure, I'm not sure how many people actually die in the series, but people are always mentioning how their parents/loved ones were killed by the Fire Nation. It's a war, and not sugar coated. It has a long arc, with room for growth, and failures and successes, even though it can be enjoyed episodicly. And, of course, it doesn't involve intelligent magical animals/robots/digital creatures being enslaved by kids and forced to fight for their own amusement! Yay for non-slavery-endorsing cartoons!
Speaking of cartoons, Canada's started airing Wolverine and the X-Men (yay Canada), which means that even though I don't have that channel, due to... magic, I could watch it. Overall... promising start. (minor spoilers, and I'll be listing the characters I noticed appearing) It does focus a bit too much on Wolverine, but it's to be expected, and I'm hoping once they officially re-form the team that won't be so much of an issue. He's never been my favorite character so when he was alone on there it wasn't too interesting. When others were there, though, I rather enjoyed it. Particularly liked the Danger Room scene with Kitty, Piotr, and Kurt, and the scenes with Beast and Wolverine in the main plot were well done too. Performances seemed fair enough for a cartoon - the only one that rubbed me the wrong way was Rogue, who seemed way too clingy and her voice was a bit annoying. Maybe they're sort of setting it a little bit off the movieverse with Rogue and Wolverine's 'special connection', but I never got the feeling from any of the other cartoons or comics that they should have been particularly close.
Aside from the main cast (some of whom were only seen in the title sequence), we saw Pyro (Australian accent included!), Boom-Boom, Dust (who gets a cool scene but doesn't talk), Rockslide (who sadly doesn't get to do much of anything, even talk), John Wraith, and a glimpse of Magneto on the TV, and one or two others I couldn't immediately identify because there were many people they could be.
I do like the concept for the show though, what with getting rid of X and Jean right off the bat.
Writing-wise, despite my writing computer being out of commision all of yesterday, because I got a good head start on it I didn't lose any time and am on target to complete my quota. Also finished a new story- still needs hellacious editing, but on the plus side it's shorter than I usually get. Next up I'm going to try a top-to-bottom restart on a story who's general concept I like but the execution blew.
And we'll finish off with a meme, stolen from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
donna_c_punk....
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
donna_c_punk gave me the letter G. It was a bit of a tough one. Despite the letter being associated with some of my all time favorite characters, once you got beyond those, it was hard to think of any that qualified that I'd given much thought about at all. So, here we go... (images also under the cut for most of them)
Grainger, the Hooded Swan series
(no pic)
I'll start with the character almost nobody on my flist will recognize from personal experience (although some of them may know the name, as I've used StarPilotGrainger as a forum name some places and referred to him dozens of times on the blog). Grainger, the one-named spaceman from Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series. Grainger was Stableford's response at violent space opera heroes he'd read (and written) so much before. He thought he'd create a character who's attitude towards violence was much like his own - that it was usually a waste, a result of a failure of intelligence, generally sickening and unpleasant, caused more troubles than it solved, and was usually best avoided if possible. So Grainger is something of a pacifist space opera hero. Not completely - he throws a punch here and there, but he never deliberately tries to kill somebody, and there are times when he bluffs and the bluff is called, he admits it and gives up rather than go through with it, and he tends to go to great lengths to avoid deaths even of his enemies. Now that sounds all noble and righteous, but the beauty of Grainger is that he's not. He's a right bastard at times. He's a misanthrope, sarcastic, acerbic, cynical of everybody's motives, including his own, and is an all-around jerk most of the time, even to friends (not to mention the alien mind symbiote that invaded him). It's just he confines his attacks to words and occasionally crushing the dreams of people when he doesn't believe they're good dreams. I almost see him as a SF version of House. Not exactly, but if they ever made a movie and got somebody to play him, I think that would be a good choice. He's lodged in my mind as one of my favorite all-time characters of science fiction, and there are only six very short novels about him, written in the 70s.
Gert Yorkes, Runaways
The somewhat plump, purple-haired, snarky, glasses-wearing girl with a killer dinosaur in Runaways. The first volume, she was my absolute favorite. Second volume somehow Chase moved into the lead, but she was always a strong second (and together they were a good match). She tended to have the best lines and usually the most healthy attitudes about things, even if she could be a pain in the ass sometimes. I don't like getting into big spoilers in memes, but let's just say the (relatively speaking) recent changes to her status in Vol 2 still disappoint me when I think about them. She'll always be one of my favorite characters in comics. I enjoy snarky characters.
Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Initially a stuffy English stereotype, it was only in the second season that he began to get depth and really grow into a character in his own right. Took me a while to think of him for this meme, but I don't see any reason to exclude him. In the show, I loved him best showing faint hints of darkness (but oddly, not the over-the-topness of when he was back in his Ripper personality), but most especially with the sort of surrogate father-daughter relationship with Buffy. I was kind of disappointed at him the Fourth Season, where, now that he didn't have a library, it seemed like he barely had anything to do (I still think they should have made him an occult studies teacher at college, obvious or not). Still, the show suffered some when he finally left, even if it made his returns all that much better. Giles was expertly played by Anthony Stewart Head, who was always my choice to play Number Six if they ever remade the Prisoner. But now it seems they just got Jesus to play him so I'm not optomistic.
General George Hammond, Stargate SG-1
Another character who could have easily gone down the role of stereotype. He was the General, the by-the-book commanding officer that Jack O'Neil was originally supposed to butt heads with (and disregard). Instead, in large part due to the actor that played him, he became to me, almost the picture perfect military commanding officer on TV - when he was by-the-book and turned down the character's requests, I by-and-large _agreed_ with him, even if I knew in-story that it was mistake (and often enough they showed that the rules were there for a reason). He also knew when to bend the rules, and showed (without _showing_ it) real care and affection for those under his command. SG-1 may have been the stars, but General George Hammond elevated them and the show with it.
Don S. Davis' recent death came as a surprise and dismay. RIP. I do hope they do some sort of memorial in the SG universe, have a scene with SG-1 attending his funeral in the next movie or something. It just seems a good way to say goodbye.
George Lass, Dead Like Me
So here we get to the relative dregs, the names I really had to struggle for. Could have chosen Gunn, but I already did a Buffyverse character (and really, I don't have all that much to say about him, he never registered too much for me). My atheist snark was tempted to choose God for the last one, and maybe I would have, but as I was looking through names that started with G, I thought of George, and when I realized I only had one female on the list, I thought this was appropriate. Georgia "George" Lass, who is killed in the first episode of Dead Like Me by a falling toilet, is assigned to become a Grim Reaper, who must find people who are about to die, pop their souls (so their death is painless), and then usher them on to their afterlife, an afterlife she never gets to see until her duties are done. Meanwhile, she's in this strange dead-but-alive state, where everybody who sees her sees somebody else's face, and since Grim Reaping doesn't pay, she has to get a lame job, and she still worries that her family is doing okay in the wake of her death and breaks the rules to check up on them. She's another very snarky character, like Gert Yorkes, but there's more of an underlying coldness and cynicism to her even if it's mostly a shell, which makes the moments when she does show softness and humanity all the more touching by contrast. The idea that she mostly ignored her little sister when she was alive, but is worried about her after death and actually tries to communicate. Plus there's the weird relationship with her weird boss and all her co-workers which is fun to watch. Unlike most of the rest of my list, she's not a 'favorite character', heck, even on that show I enjoyed Mason and Rube more than her. But she is appealing enough that I like to watch her story.
Finished: Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds
Started: Needle, by Hal Clement
Thoughts on Revelation Space behind the cut. General concept spoilers only. Short version: Left me a little cold, actually.
So, much of the novel takes place on a colony of a colony investigating a lost civiliation, and a slower than light spaceship in which the crew spends years between journeys (since FTL travel is believed impossible). The spaceship crew wants somebody from the colony, who wants to learn more about the extinct civilization, and somebody also wants to kill him. That's the thumbnail back of the book style.
The problem? Well, I never really got attached to any of the characters. Most of them are unpleasant for one reason or another, and while that's not enough to make me dislike a book, it usually doesn't help. The 'universe' the story takes place in is mildly interesting at times, and there's a lot going on in the story, but it doesn't gel together as a whole I could believe. Perhaps it suffers especially while reading it at the same time as AFutD, which also has a lot going on but pulls it off much more successfully.
Also, I was a little irritated at the number of times somebody told somebody else some aspect of "the big mystery" but we, the reader never learned about it until the end. And it wasn't really enough to satisfy.
It was the author's first novel, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt - I may read more from him if I find it used, but it's not such a great discovery that I'm going to be seeking him out.
Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Started: A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Reread AFutD several times, so there's no need to talk about it again. Always makes me want to read the prequel immediately afterwards. Key phrases: hexapodia as the key insight, still enjoyable.
So, this weekend's been a bit strange. In addition to not having a normal TV (Which does weird and unexpected things to your sense of time), because of minor concerns with the computer of mine that wasn't specifically failing, I decided to run a ScanDisk on it, and see it through to the end. That Scandisk? Took more than 24 hours. So I was without my main talking computer (I segregate things somewhat - one computer is for mail, LJ, forums, and other such that I'm interacting with people, the other is for researching weird things and watching videos. I can do limited switchover, but not in all cases and not especially easily). It was almost a weekend without communicative net. If the progress bar didn't lie to me, it likely would have been. It was at a point where each 1% complete was taking 2-3 hours, except when it reached 95% complete it jumped right to 100%. I'm not complaining, mind you, it's just a little odd (and considering the first 80% was done in something like a half hour, well, progress bars are filthy, filthy liars). Combine that with another weekend without much TV, and it looks like a recipe for boredom.
This was alleviated somewhat with a chip orgy. I'm using the term orgy metaphorically, of course, I may have the odd fetish here or there, but I'm not a freak. Well, not in that way. Since Pringles were on sale for $1 at No Frills and so were Herrs Tortilla chips, I bought a bunch on Friday. Normally I limit my chip intake, but I figured, what the hell, I'm bored, depressed, and hungry.
The other thing I did was watch cartoons on my computer, specifically Avatar the Last Airbender, and surfthechannel.com. See, I only caught onto Avatar somewhere in the early 2nd season. I missed the 1st season almost completely, and never got around to catching the third (they changed the time on me and by the time I realized it, the 3rd season was half over). So I figured since nothing was going on, I'd go back and watch from the beginning. I'm about halfway through the first season now. It's interesting the misconceptions you can develop when you watch a show from the middle. (Cut for length, not really spoilery except for the status of characters in the first episodes)For example, I was always under the impression that Zuko's scarring and banishment was something that happened during the series itself, that he was on an ordinary mission to capture the Avatar, and when he failed he was banished and scarred as punishment, maybe late in the first season. Turns out, both were part of the character before he met the Avatar. I kinda preferred it my way (would have been more of an 'arc'), but it's not a drastic disappointment. I also grew to more of an appreciation for Sokka watching the first season. The 2nd season I knew him mostly as a goofy, useless, comic relief character with occasional moments of brilliance, and some of that's still true, but early on I could see more of him as being a hero on his own merits, and he's actually become one of my favorites now.
Overall I really enjoy the show and kind of regret not catching onto it sooner. This really is the kind of show US animation needs more of - appeals to kids but can be occasionally very dark, with death not being a dirty word as it seems to be in a lot of cartoons (where it seems that characters can be dead, but mostly only in the distant past and usually non-violently unless it's the motivation for the main character). Sure, I'm not sure how many people actually die in the series, but people are always mentioning how their parents/loved ones were killed by the Fire Nation. It's a war, and not sugar coated. It has a long arc, with room for growth, and failures and successes, even though it can be enjoyed episodicly. And, of course, it doesn't involve intelligent magical animals/robots/digital creatures being enslaved by kids and forced to fight for their own amusement! Yay for non-slavery-endorsing cartoons!
Speaking of cartoons, Canada's started airing Wolverine and the X-Men (yay Canada), which means that even though I don't have that channel, due to... magic, I could watch it. Overall... promising start. (minor spoilers, and I'll be listing the characters I noticed appearing) It does focus a bit too much on Wolverine, but it's to be expected, and I'm hoping once they officially re-form the team that won't be so much of an issue. He's never been my favorite character so when he was alone on there it wasn't too interesting. When others were there, though, I rather enjoyed it. Particularly liked the Danger Room scene with Kitty, Piotr, and Kurt, and the scenes with Beast and Wolverine in the main plot were well done too. Performances seemed fair enough for a cartoon - the only one that rubbed me the wrong way was Rogue, who seemed way too clingy and her voice was a bit annoying. Maybe they're sort of setting it a little bit off the movieverse with Rogue and Wolverine's 'special connection', but I never got the feeling from any of the other cartoons or comics that they should have been particularly close.
Aside from the main cast (some of whom were only seen in the title sequence), we saw Pyro (Australian accent included!), Boom-Boom, Dust (who gets a cool scene but doesn't talk), Rockslide (who sadly doesn't get to do much of anything, even talk), John Wraith, and a glimpse of Magneto on the TV, and one or two others I couldn't immediately identify because there were many people they could be.
I do like the concept for the show though, what with getting rid of X and Jean right off the bat.
Writing-wise, despite my writing computer being out of commision all of yesterday, because I got a good head start on it I didn't lose any time and am on target to complete my quota. Also finished a new story- still needs hellacious editing, but on the plus side it's shorter than I usually get. Next up I'm going to try a top-to-bottom restart on a story who's general concept I like but the execution blew.
And we'll finish off with a meme, stolen from
donna_c_punk....1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
donna_c_punk gave me the letter G. It was a bit of a tough one. Despite the letter being associated with some of my all time favorite characters, once you got beyond those, it was hard to think of any that qualified that I'd given much thought about at all. So, here we go... (images also under the cut for most of them)Grainger, the Hooded Swan series
(no pic)
I'll start with the character almost nobody on my flist will recognize from personal experience (although some of them may know the name, as I've used StarPilotGrainger as a forum name some places and referred to him dozens of times on the blog). Grainger, the one-named spaceman from Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series. Grainger was Stableford's response at violent space opera heroes he'd read (and written) so much before. He thought he'd create a character who's attitude towards violence was much like his own - that it was usually a waste, a result of a failure of intelligence, generally sickening and unpleasant, caused more troubles than it solved, and was usually best avoided if possible. So Grainger is something of a pacifist space opera hero. Not completely - he throws a punch here and there, but he never deliberately tries to kill somebody, and there are times when he bluffs and the bluff is called, he admits it and gives up rather than go through with it, and he tends to go to great lengths to avoid deaths even of his enemies. Now that sounds all noble and righteous, but the beauty of Grainger is that he's not. He's a right bastard at times. He's a misanthrope, sarcastic, acerbic, cynical of everybody's motives, including his own, and is an all-around jerk most of the time, even to friends (not to mention the alien mind symbiote that invaded him). It's just he confines his attacks to words and occasionally crushing the dreams of people when he doesn't believe they're good dreams. I almost see him as a SF version of House. Not exactly, but if they ever made a movie and got somebody to play him, I think that would be a good choice. He's lodged in my mind as one of my favorite all-time characters of science fiction, and there are only six very short novels about him, written in the 70s.
Gert Yorkes, Runaways
The somewhat plump, purple-haired, snarky, glasses-wearing girl with a killer dinosaur in Runaways. The first volume, she was my absolute favorite. Second volume somehow Chase moved into the lead, but she was always a strong second (and together they were a good match). She tended to have the best lines and usually the most healthy attitudes about things, even if she could be a pain in the ass sometimes. I don't like getting into big spoilers in memes, but let's just say the (relatively speaking) recent changes to her status in Vol 2 still disappoint me when I think about them. She'll always be one of my favorite characters in comics. I enjoy snarky characters.
Giles, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Initially a stuffy English stereotype, it was only in the second season that he began to get depth and really grow into a character in his own right. Took me a while to think of him for this meme, but I don't see any reason to exclude him. In the show, I loved him best showing faint hints of darkness (but oddly, not the over-the-topness of when he was back in his Ripper personality), but most especially with the sort of surrogate father-daughter relationship with Buffy. I was kind of disappointed at him the Fourth Season, where, now that he didn't have a library, it seemed like he barely had anything to do (I still think they should have made him an occult studies teacher at college, obvious or not). Still, the show suffered some when he finally left, even if it made his returns all that much better. Giles was expertly played by Anthony Stewart Head, who was always my choice to play Number Six if they ever remade the Prisoner. But now it seems they just got Jesus to play him so I'm not optomistic.
General George Hammond, Stargate SG-1
Another character who could have easily gone down the role of stereotype. He was the General, the by-the-book commanding officer that Jack O'Neil was originally supposed to butt heads with (and disregard). Instead, in large part due to the actor that played him, he became to me, almost the picture perfect military commanding officer on TV - when he was by-the-book and turned down the character's requests, I by-and-large _agreed_ with him, even if I knew in-story that it was mistake (and often enough they showed that the rules were there for a reason). He also knew when to bend the rules, and showed (without _showing_ it) real care and affection for those under his command. SG-1 may have been the stars, but General George Hammond elevated them and the show with it.
Don S. Davis' recent death came as a surprise and dismay. RIP. I do hope they do some sort of memorial in the SG universe, have a scene with SG-1 attending his funeral in the next movie or something. It just seems a good way to say goodbye.
George Lass, Dead Like Me
So here we get to the relative dregs, the names I really had to struggle for. Could have chosen Gunn, but I already did a Buffyverse character (and really, I don't have all that much to say about him, he never registered too much for me). My atheist snark was tempted to choose God for the last one, and maybe I would have, but as I was looking through names that started with G, I thought of George, and when I realized I only had one female on the list, I thought this was appropriate. Georgia "George" Lass, who is killed in the first episode of Dead Like Me by a falling toilet, is assigned to become a Grim Reaper, who must find people who are about to die, pop their souls (so their death is painless), and then usher them on to their afterlife, an afterlife she never gets to see until her duties are done. Meanwhile, she's in this strange dead-but-alive state, where everybody who sees her sees somebody else's face, and since Grim Reaping doesn't pay, she has to get a lame job, and she still worries that her family is doing okay in the wake of her death and breaks the rules to check up on them. She's another very snarky character, like Gert Yorkes, but there's more of an underlying coldness and cynicism to her even if it's mostly a shell, which makes the moments when she does show softness and humanity all the more touching by contrast. The idea that she mostly ignored her little sister when she was alive, but is worried about her after death and actually tries to communicate. Plus there's the weird relationship with her weird boss and all her co-workers which is fun to watch. Unlike most of the rest of my list, she's not a 'favorite character', heck, even on that show I enjoyed Mason and Rube more than her. But she is appealing enough that I like to watch her story.
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-09-07 04:43 pm (UTC)Letter for me, plz?
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Date: 2008-09-07 05:25 pm (UTC)